You want to make it big as an Internet entrepreneur? You could start up a company, search for financing, hire staff and go public. Or you could just clean out your garage.

That's how Gina Ward of Columbus, Ohio, got started. Ward, 47, fretted about her future after she got "downsized" out of her executive secretary job at Borden Inc. last year. Then a friend prodded her to put some of the junk she had acquired at yard sales up for sale on eBay, the giant Internet auction house.

"I had this sugar bowl I'd bought for 50 cents. I put it on eBay for $7.99, and I started getting letters from people saying, 'Do you know what you have there?' "

The sugar bowl turned out to be a rare Noritake humidor for sugar cubes. Ward's 50-cent investment netted her nearly $400 -- and she was hooked.

Her husband, Ralph, 57, retired in June, and the two have made trading on eBay their business ever since, buying up pottery, dishes, sheet music, thimbles, Depression glass and fishing lures at yard sales and auctions in Ohio and selling them for a profit on eBay. They now post 25 to 100 items a week for sale and, some months, bring in as much as $5,000 in gross revenues.

The Wards are part of a new breed of "Bay traders," people who make a living selling stuff on the Internet. Most of them prefer eBay, which has 85 percent of the online auction market.

Like "day traders," who work full- time buying and selling stock online, Bay traders spend endless hours at their computers, checking the latest bids on their auctions.

Bay traders say they get higher prices at auctions than at swap meets or collectibles shows because bidding generates excitement.

"All you need is two people who want the same thing, and the price goes up," Gina Ward said. And the Internet's worldwide reach makes multiple bids more likely.

"If someone wants to sit down and work, they can make a small fortune on eBay. You just have to find something other people want and sell it," said Ray Geeck, who with his wife, Anne, works seven days a week auctioning off antique dolls.

The couple used to sell at doll shows or at their store in Lake Panasoffkee, Fla. But in the fall of 1997, they ventured online.

"We were getting $300 and $400 on eBay for things we couldn't sell for $125 at the shows," said Ray Geeck. They gave up the doll shows and stuck to their computer -- which eventually became several computers and a staff of 10. Last year, the business grossed about $1 million, and a few weeks ago, the Geecks paid cash for a three-bedroom house with a perfect view of the lake.

"EBay isn't about auctions. It's about connecting buyers and sellers. It's enabled people to do something they couldn't do before -- faster, better and cheaper," said Meg Whitman, chief executive officer of the San Jose company and herself a new stock-option billionaire.

Mark Maron spent a dozen years selling animation cels -- individual hand-painted pictures used to make cartoons -- to some 30 or 40 galleries from his offices in suburban Chicago. A little more than a year ago, he shifted all of his business to eBay.

"I am satisfied beyond anything I could have imagined," said Maron, who has twice outgrown his office space since making the shift.

Nobody knows how many people are full-time eBay sellers. Late last year, the company singled out 10,000 people and crowned them PowerSellers, signifying sales of more than $2,000 a month. But not everyone has quit their day jobs.

Eric Drum, who sells antique stock certificates from his home in Toledo, Ohio, has made enough from eBay and from his own Web site to buy a new computer desk, fax machine, printer, scanner and a new Mercedes Benz. But, newly married and 34, he's not ready to give up his job as a supervisor at a plant that manufactures Hunt's snack-pack pudding. There's no telling, he said, how long the auction business will hold out.

Laura Sperber, a longtime coin dealer in Lincroft, N.J., said she uses eBay because it saves her money. She pays $1,500 for an ad in a coin magazine with 75,000 readers. A listing on eBay costs her $2 or less and has a potential reach of 2.1 million people. Although not all 2.1 million are interested in old coins, Sperber said some of her auctions have had as many as 10,000 hits.

If the item sells on eBay, sellers must pay a commission of 1.25 to 5 percent. Sperber expects her business, Legend Numismatics, to do about $1 million in sales on eBay this year.

Online auctions also let people operate from anywhere.

"We're 500 miles from the nearest city, Detroit, and we don't get much traffic in the winter months -- and winter is most of what we're about up here," said Judy Owen, an antique-furniture dealer in remote Traverse City, Mich. About a year ago, she put a few pieces up for sale on eBay, and in three weeks, she'd made $15,000.

Like any small business, Bay traders still have to worry about things like shipping, billing and bad debts.

The Wards have filled their basement with boxes, bubble wrap, plastic peanuts and other packaging materials, mostly salvaged from other people's trash. Their family room is full of computer equipment for posting merchandise and keeping track of sales.

Many have invested in digital cameras, so they can show their wares on the Web.

Some sellers have set up credit- card accounts and daily United Parcel Service pickup. But the Wards like to keep things simple. Ralph Ward makes a few runs to the post office and the UPS office each week. And they still take checks, though they always wait for the check to clear before shipping. Out of 1,000 sales, they've had just two bounced checks.

"Eventually, you know what kinds of people will give you trouble, what the red flags are," said Ralph Ward. Buyers who want to wriggle out of a deal often appear to be looking for faults in the merchandise, or they may become overly particular about how and when an item can be shipped, he said.